My BBC journalism fellowship: Inspired by media giants and Pussy Riot
Divya Arya
Delhi-based bilingual correspondent, BBC World Service
BBC journalists have until 20 March to apply for the latest University of Michigan and Reuters Institute Fellowships. Divya Arya, a winner of the 2014-15 Knight Wallace Fellowship in Michigan, shares some of her experiences and advice for anyone hoping to follow in her footsteps:
It was somewhat of a guilty pleasure; the one time in my life when I was forced to put myself squarely in the centre of my universe.
Right from filling in the application when I had to write almost three pages about what motivated my work and me; then at the interview when I was asked about my ultimate goal, my ambition; and throughout the Fellowship: questions about dreams, direction and discovery.
Maybe it’s something to do with the American way of life, or maybe the Fellowship director’s, but I must admit I warmed to it.
They may seem like philosophical questions but ‘where do we come from?’, ‘why do we do what we do?’ and ‘where are we headed?’ do in fact have very simple answers. We probably just don’t ask them enough. Or have time to.
To be honest, I didn’t go to Michigan prepared to ponder such questions. I went to write a research paper.
During the four-month placement you’re expected to study to complete the project you outlined in your application, but specific output isn’t required - an idea so alien to me that I had to set myself a goal. I had to have something to show for my time there.
And that was a good call. The University of Michigan (below) is an amazing place to attempt research, with its rich collection of resource material in books, journals, magazines and films.
My research topic was the Indian news media’s portrayal of sexual violence and I was able to source plenty of specific references. I even discovered a class that discussed ‘gender violence and media’ in a US context.
Fellows are encouraged to take classes at the university and these need not relate directly to the research they’re undertaking. A warning though: it may take a few days of navigating the University of Michigan’s website to grasp exactly what it has to offer.
I took my time, finally coming across some incredibly thought-provoking classes on ‘sex panics in the US and UK’ and the ‘history of Islam in South Asia’.
Of course the perks of going back to university abound. We got to hear from the Pussy Riot protest band, novelist and human rights activist Alice Walker and the Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo, among others.
Special seminars were organised exclusively for the Fellows - an amazing introduction to the big names in the US news industry. Charles Lewis, investigative journalist and founder of the Centre of Public Integrity, Jeff Fager, chief executive at CBS News, and Rick Kaplan, former president of CNN-US and MSNBC, were just some of these.
And then there were my fellow Fellows - an aspect of the experience that can neither be planned for nor imagined in advance. My cohort included a dozen US journalists and a few of us from different parts of the world. I’d feared it might be isolating, but it turned out to be exactly the opposite.
A whole new world opened up to me - a melting pot of knowledge, experience and points of view. To my delight I learned that I was the first journalist from India to join the Knight Wallace Fellowship programme and suddenly my horizons were broader than ever before.
Literally. In four short months I also travelled from Michigan to Canada (that’s me on the Canadian oil sands above) and then back across the Atlantic to Turkey (me again, top image, sailing the Bosphorus). Depending on which term you find yourself in (autumn or winter) and the foreign trips planned at that time, you could be headed for Brazil or Argentina.
I went only with a plan to do research but the whole experience turned out to be a sum of many parts. And the fact that my research paper has been selected to be published in a book and a journal later this year is an added bonus.
A final thought. It didn’t work for me but if you have a partner who could possibly take a sabbatical at the same time take them along too. It could be a beautiful journey to make together.
BBC journalism fellowships 2015-16 now open for applications
